London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

Les immortels

Today’s Fête Nationale gives me an excuse to talk about the Académie française, probably the coolest secular institution in the world.

In 2018, James Reginato wrote an article for Vanity Fair that peeked into the world of the « immortels ».

He pointed out that the election of an academician is sometimes compared to the election of a Pope, with Xavier Darcos joking the difference is that each academician “is convinced he is more important than the Pope”.

The College of Cardinals is also more efficient than the Académie: this year’s conclave took just two days to elect our new supreme pontiff.

It’s true the immortals have already chosen Alain Aspect to take the seat vacated by the death of the Marqués de Vargas Llosa, but there are six further empty seats.

According to the operations of the Académie, though six seats are empty, only one is actually designated as vacant.

For a vacancy to formally exist it must be declared during a formal session of the body, after which time a new academician is to be elected within three months (in theory, at least).

Seat 3’s most recent inhabitant was Jean-Denis Bredin who died in 2021. The other empty seats are number 10 (Florence Delay, m. 2025), number 11 (Gabriel de Broglie, m. 2025), number 14 (the great Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, m. 2023), number 20 (Angelo Rinaldi, m. 2025), and number 27 (Pierre Nora, m. 2025).

Needless to say, if one was called upon, one could not turn down so great an honour.

France24 recently did a small feature looking behind the scenes at the Académie française.

Published at 1:20 pm on Monday 14 July 2025. Categories: France History.
Leave a comment

NAME (required)

EMAIL (required)

WEBSITE (not required)

COMMENT

Home | About | Contact | Paginated Index | Twitter | Facebook | RSS/Atom Feed
andrewcusack.com | © Andrew Cusack 2004-present (Unless otherwise stated)